Last December, I was busy assisting displaced residents from the Tanglewood Apartments and Lamplighter Inn with the hope of ensuring they would not be on the streets for the holidays. I wanted to turn out a large group of residents from both complexes to speak at a City Council meeting to request help with finding a permanent place for them to call home. The residents were quick to point out, though, that getting uptown for the meeting would be problematic, because they would have to take the bus.
While I ride the bus and take the train out of convenience, hearing their experiences of riding the bus out of necessity was enlightening. Outsiders might think riding the bus is simple, especially taking one uptown. But residents told me it would be a hassle, as they found the bus to be inconvenient and unreliable – and improving bus service is far from their top priority.
My community outreach informs me that affordable housing is the issue that concerns residents the most. The city hopes to collect $1.5 billion over 30 years in Housing Trust Fund bonds (if the bond capacity is there). But over that same period, the city hopes to raise $19 billion for transportation with a higher sales tax.
If given the choice, wouldn’t a taxpayer rather pay for a better place to lay their head than how quickly they get to work?
I believe this focus on transportation has arisen because the corporate community prioritizes getting their employees to work, local government prioritizes getting people back uptown, and if both can be achieved solely on the back of the taxpayers, that’s a win-win for both of them.
I immediately started asking questions of city staff and compiled an 8-page document asking questions centered around accountability, bus service, microtransit, affordable housing/displacement, roads, environmental impact and community benefits. These were the areas of concern raised when Action NC canvassed our communities, conducted neighborhood meetings and that our base who depend on transportation deserve answers to.
What I found reflects the “Charlotte Way” – responses along the lines of “We don’t want to anger the legislature by asking questions” and “Getting anything we can is better than nothing.”
In fact, Charlotte delegated lobbying for the authorization needed for the tax increase (the PAVE Act) to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. Fox, meet henhouse.
Simultaneously, we started asking the same questions to a member of the N.C. House of Representatives that we regard as a champion for low-income residents in the legislature. That process was not much better: “I am not at liberty to say what is being discussed because we don’t want to upset the party in control and not get anything passed.”
This lack of transparency should be troubling to anyone who remembers Charlotte’s track record of broken promises when it comes to transportation over the past 30 years. Those broken promises include:
- The Red Line never being built
- significant cost overruns on the original and extension of the Blue Line, leading to shortening the line
- failures to address displacement
- failure to provide a promised train or trolley down the center lane of Independence Boulevard
- failure to build the Gateway Station
- failures to remodel the Charlotte Transportation Center uptown and keep people safe there
This all brings me to problems I feel can’t be resolved by faith in the process or memorandums of understanding.
Asking residents, specifically low-income residents, to pay a regressive tax with no guarantees or guardrails to prevent a repeat of this pernicious history is the definition of insanity. They pay while the affluent benefit.
The mobility plan is short on details, and the PAVE Act is heavy on restrictions. This means trouble right here in the Queen City if you are low-income and in the situation of the Lamplighter and Tanglewood residents discussed above.
Currently, if you live in the Forest Park Mobile Home community, you will be forced to uproot your family in a few months because the owner is selling the property, and you are entitled to no assistance or way to move your 30-year-old mobile home. For them, 15-minute bus frequencies are less important than the displacement of their families.
As I come to the word limit and low-income residents come to the end of their ability to afford to live in Charlotte, consider these truths:
- You are being asked to support a tax in which you had almost no input.
- The plan for “roads” has zero commitment to do anything specific, so how do you know it will actually decrease congestion?
- There is no actual commitment in the PAVE Act funding to build the Silver Line.
- Where is the plan to curb displacement specifically caused by the mobility plan? And is that paid out of your city taxes, or the new sales tax collected by this new Transit Authority?
The only part of this plan that is an effective use of taxpayer money is the bus component, and that wouldn’t require a 1-cent sales tax increase to implement.
I don’t subscribe to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance’s position that “if we don’t do this right now, we will never do it.” If that’s the case, they should chip in money for the success of mobility instead of just funding the campaign to convince residents to pay for it out of their sales tax.
I will not be voting for low-income people to pay for their own displacement, corporations to get their workers back in the office with my money and the legislature to dictate how this tax increase is spent without contributing any funds to help. I’m voting NO, and I hope you will, too.
This is not something the citizens of a city with any self-respect can accept.